Final Word

Happy New Year everybody! Here are 10 predictions for 2010:

1. Tiger Woods will continue to bang anything that moves and may actually try to sexually mount the 18th hole at Augusta. Tiger will also win the Masters, U.S. Open, PGA and British Open by a combined 30 strokes and find a way to work “strokes” into a pickup line to a waitress at T.G.I. Friday’s.

2. Oprah Winfrey, Rosie O’Donnell, Tyra Banks, Kirstie Alley, Queen Latifah and Dr. Phil will lose a lot of weight, write another book about it, then tell the rest of us that the secret to dieting starts with “having a loving relationship with yourself.” Then, when nobody’s looking, they’ll put the weight back on, possibly becoming even fatter and even more out of shape than before they started. At no point will anybody from their TV show audiences raise a hand and ask a question like, “Hey, Dr. Phil, what happened to your secret to weight loss, about having a loving relationship with yourself? Did you and yourself break up? Or did you just start cheating on yourself with pizza and cupcakes?”

3. The swine flu virus will peter out and everyone who proactively opted to get the vaccine will silently feel just a little gypped that they couldn’t tell at least one dying person, “I told you so.” Either that or swine flu will rise up like the Angel of Death, smiting everything in its path and leaving zombies to walk the earth. On the plus side, Dr. Phil’s diet will finally start working.

4. We will continue to read about the drunken, coked-out sexploits of celebrities such as Charlie Sheen, Amy Winehouse, Courtney Love, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears and wonder why none of them has overdosed yet. The rest of us won’t be able to eat a Kraft single of American cheese without our cholesterol skyrocketing 50 points and having a doctor trying to ram a greased finger up our butts. Meanwhile, Ozzy Osbourne and Mick Jagger will continue drawing breath and collecting millions for making Zune commercials.

5. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin will officially announce her candidacy for president of the United States. The nation will collectively groan its disapproval, then secretly imagine her naked.

6. The 2012 kooks will already be out in full force, hogging publicity, hoarding cans of baked beans and telling the rest us how the Mayans had the end of the world figured out thousands of years ago right down to the very day. No one will be allowed to give the dissenting view that if the Mayans were so evolved how come they A)didn’t wear pants B)didn’t invent the wheel C)couldn’t even foretell their own extinction because we’re all still here enjoying crushed ice, DirecTV and air conditioning and, lookie lookie, no Mayans. Ziggy and Garfield have calendars, too, but nobody is forecasting that we should all stay in bed with a “bad case of the Mondays.”

7. Another economic expert will go on a 24-hour news network and declare the recession “officially over.” The show the expert appears on will immediately be canceled because of low ratings and lack of commercial sponsorship.

8. Those Twilight kids will make another movie. It will earn a gazillion dollars but half of us will confuse it with the Harry Potter movies, which also feature stories about the supernatural and a lead actress that we’re reluctant to describe as “hot” until we see a notarized copy of a birth certificate that proves she’s over 18.

9. NBC will, once again, screw up its coverage of the Olympics by refusing to air any live action of the 2010 winter games. Viewers will be outraged until realizing that what they’re missing is mostly tobogganing and curling.

10. Everyone in America will finally have a Twitter, Facebook or MySpace account, at which point the ability to communicate in person will devolve completely. It will not be uncommon to see one of these virtual “friends” on the street and greet them with a thumb up, the universal symbol for “like.” Afterward both parties will immediately log on to Twitter, Facebook or MySpace and leave a comment about the encounter in their status updates.